Businesses must attain a balance between maximizing productivity, reducing risk, and fulfilling customer requirements. This balance is crucial because while every business has a specialty, few excel at every single aspect of running a successful enterprise – nor should they. An enterprise should focus on its core, revenue generating work, and related customer service efforts.

But effective business management requires a broader focus. Efficient transaction processing is a prerequisite for success. Turning massive amounts of business-critical information generated not only through said transactions but also by active account management into effective outcomes, is another.

The numerous, intricate daily transaction and information management processes undertaken by any modern enterprise can lead to errors in payment processing, missed communications deadlines, or a variety of workflow-based issues - which can all lead to delayed or lost revenue, and even worse - aggravated customers.

By leveraging specialized knowledge platforms through an external partner, enterprises can gain access to innovative end-to-end solutions, integrating data aggregation, workflow, analytics, payment processing, exception management and outcome resolutions. Technology and knowledge platforms help automate and streamline high-volume, mission-critical processes for business across industries.

Here are three specific ways leveraging a specialized partner who leverages key technology can help organizations streamline operations and focus on their core, strategic goals:

1. Inject Automation into Transaction & Info Management Processes Can Reduce Errors

   Organizations today are confronted with enormous amounts of data to process. It’s not uncommon for a given enterprise to be processing an average of 15,000 invoices per day – or tens of thousands of documents per week. This already-daunting task is further complicated by issues like the use of multiple, disparate legacy computer systems. Or, a lack of an effective business-continuity plan ensuring operations can continue in the event of a power outage, extreme weather, or any other type of major disruption to a business. Confronting these issues effectively from a strictly internal perspective might be difficult. These types of issues however can be mitigated by partnering with a specialized technology provider who focuses on managing such complex processes. For example, some providers can implement a single, integrated system which manages the capture, processing, research and archival of payments, invoices, and other related documents. These systems can support both electronic and paper transactions, and offer a number of benefits, including: cost savings on payments processing, streamlined processes which improve productivity, automated ‘match rates’ to preemptively reduce errors, and on-site support from the end-user company’s own IT team – creating a highly integrated, independent, and effectively efficient system.

2. Leverage Specialized, Tech-Based Partnerships is a Proven Way to Maintain Focus on Customer Service, Sales, and Core Strengths

   When a business grows, so can document volume. At a certain point, the growth may overwhelm manual, or paper-based systems to process said documents. Over time, this will begin to impede customer service delivery, which can impact that growth itself. While confronting the issues that accompany rapid growth is a problem every business stakeholder would like to have – it is also one that must be addressed. Even without substantial growth, processes can simply age out of effectiveness.

   When a company needs to improve processes, and put in place superior workflow technology, it can be less costly, more time efficient, and ultimately, more effective to partner with a reliable, proven supplier. This way, the client enterprise gains a true partner, one who can commit to developing, deploying, and monitoring new processes and systems that are scalable over time. Attempting to develop everything internally would be complex and costly.

3. Link BPO & Transaction Processing Services (TPS) to the Same Provider to Provide Maximum Governance, Cost Savings, & Efficiency

   BPO has been established as an effective way for enterprises to streamline and update internal processes to refocus on core, revenue-generating work. Yet, many of the benefits can be negated by complicated vendor management scenarios, where one outsourcer is handling payment processing for instance, and another is managing the print and mail work for statements, invoices, and other communications. By bringing all the areas of your enterprise under the same supplier, organizations gain a single point of contact to control and monitor these actions, leverage synergies across the business and often time reduce costs – creating the simplified management structure needed to maximize the value of these efforts.

   Outsourcing to a single vendor who can handle your needs holistically has other benefits, too. When handled in-house, line items like statement generation, call centers, lockbox services and payment processing really add up. But full-service, end-to-end BPOs absorb these costs or provide them at a much lower rate than a single enterprise could negotiate with providers on their own.

   As noted, every business has a specialty. Joining forces with one whose focus is different and mutually beneficial can provide better results at lower costs than handling everything in-house. Particularly if that partner has a robust service and solution offering to handle the entirety of your periphery.

As the business world becomes increasingly competitive, a need to refocus on customer service and core operational goals has emerged. One effective strategy that’s surfaced is BPO – a strategy which becomes even more effective when all areas that are outsourced can be handled by a single, holistic outsourcing partner.

Partnering with specialized, external suppliers is a time-tested, highly effective way for enterprises to free up resources, enabling them to focus on core business objectives. In fact, 57% of executives interviewed for a recent Deloitte survey on the subject noted that exact reason as their motivation for engaging an outsourcer originally.

As organizations evolve, they are looking to off-load business critical daily operations to specialty providers - accelerating performance and innovation, reducing costs, and streamlining business processes across the enterprise.

In particular, two growth areas have emerged; enterprise information management (EIM) and transaction processing services (TPS). In this information-driven age, it is crucial that businesses  effectively manage the growing amounts of information and data, as well as efficiently process payments, transactions, enrollments, applications, and statements—allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activity.

When an organization is evaluating whether to outsource a business process or keep it in-house, the number of vendors that would need to be involved in a successful outsourcing initiative should be one of the first considerations.

If you're managing multiple vendors in relation to your TPS and EIM needs, many of the operational efficiencies, cost savings, and management streamlining that these partnerships provide can be negated by the complexities of managing multiple relationships. If you need multiple vendors to handle your organizations business processes, is there really an advantage over simply managing multiple internal departments?

But, by partnering with a single-source provider; your enterprise can achieve optimal efficiency, maximum cost savings, and the ability to streamline operations to refocus more exclusively on customer service and growing your business. Read on for five reasons why partnering with a true end-to-end TPS/EIM provider is the optimal approach:

1. TPS & EIM are Inherently Linked

   Partnerships with specialized companies have become a go-to strategy for enterprises trying to refocus on core, revenue-generating work. Yet, many benefits of this approach can be negated by complicated vendor management scenarios. For example, EIM platforms can facilitate the exchange, consolidation, organization, and analysis of large amounts of structured and unstructured data that are crucial to an enterprise's ability to effectively manage decisions, and enable the presentment of critical customer information through unified communication services.

   TPS offerings then use the structured data output from shared EIM platforms and apply industry and customer specific rules-based data validation, management of exceptions, business automation, and outcome resolutions to complete transactions, client interactions, and other operational processes. From there, these fully integrated EIM and TPS platforms, help facilitate reliable information workflows through data aggregation, seamless connectivity, and automated processes to significantly reduce cycle times and improve quality.

   When platforms are integrated and supplied by the same provider, these types of workflows are made possible. When multiple partners are providing disparate platforms to manage payments, communications, and more – management scenarios can balloon in terms of complication.

2. Linking EIM & TPS Outsourcing Services can Provide Optimized Cost Savings

   Having established the inherent connections between TPS and EIM services and solutions, we can begin to see the inherent value in keeping these activities under the same roof. Single sourcing, defined as the practice of using only one vendor to handle the entirety of outsourced processes -  is widely recognized as a beneficial approach producing far greater advantages. Single sourcing offers various benefits such as lower production costs, and can help create better value for customers and stakeholders by keeping the amount of governance required to a bare minimum. Working with a single vendor is often more cost effective as it enables better utilization of resources – both managerial and financial. It also cuts down the interoperability issues significantly. In this case, two metaphorical heads are not better than one.

3. Increase Delivery & Efficiency of Service

   Working with a single vendor to handle the entirety of your needs can streamline service delivery in several ways. A single-source partner takes responsibility for the entire service delivery process within the outsourced operational areas. There is no pointing of fingers or blame on others for non-performance or delay in delivery. This sense of responsibility can result in more effective and efficient delivery of products or services. It also streamlines the amount of oversight you'll need to allocate internally, because as the number of vendors rises, so does the amount of internal oversight they'll need.

4. Decreased Training & Governance

   Any worthwhile outsourcer will make your business easier to manage over time. But, like any new business relationship – there is an introductory period to share necessary information for each party to handle their responsibilities properly. This means you'll need to onboard and govern each outsourcing vendor you work with. In the case of single-sourcing, a business needs to train only one service provider. Saving considerable amount of time and energy for the enterprise, which can subsequently allocate their resources – human and financial - to more critical areas.

5. Increased Control over Branding & Corporate Image

   A substantial part of the EIM/TPS mix is represented by communications. Payments – in the forms of invoices, bills, statements, or receipts – are themselves communications. Many pieces of information that need to be produced, distributed, and managed by an outsourcing partner are communications as well. When these communications are produced by multiple vendors, it can affect branding negatively through disparate output quality, data inconsistencies, or lack of coordination between vendors. When all operations are done under the same roof, it helps avoid the above-described issues, while boosting the quality of work and helping ensure that the highest quality of service is provided to your customers.

To conclude, it is easier to derive the maximum value from your externally-based partnerships when the number of vendors you need to partner with is kept to a minimum. Especially in the related fields of TPS and EIM, placing all of that work with an organization who can handle it in an end-to-end manner is simply the best practice.

Show of hands: who here hasn’t imagined how nice it would be to work from home? As they say, be careful what you wish for. For many people, working from home has become a mandate, and if you’re not so sure how to feel about that, please know that you’re not alone.

Working remotely has its challenges even in the best of circumstances. And we know these aren’t the best of circumstances. That’s why we’ve been talking to our HR team about how to make working from home...work--because for many of you out there, working from home is the new “working,” at least for the foreseeable future. Here are some of the words of wisdom we’ve collected thus far:

Set up a home office

Figure out where you are most productive, and be willing to move to a different place if it turns out not to be workable for you.

Treat every workday as a day in the office

Start your day at a defined time. End at a defined time. Take defined breaks

Use your work computer

Security demands continuing to use company-issued devices to access company information. Don’t leave your devices unattended. Treat them as you would treat them at the office.

Schedule daily check-ins

Staying engaged is crucial. Daily check-ins with your team can help to reinforce you’re part of a team, you’re all in this together, and business is continuing (as is life).

Expect the unexpected and overcommunicate

These two go hand in hand. But let your supervisor know if you’re having issues with your childrens’ schedules, etc.

Be kind to yourself and your family

Try not to stress out over parenting issues. You were a parent before this. No one expects a superhero. You’ve got this.

The Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for healthcare insurance providers is fast approaching and now is a crucial time to prepare. The key factors to a successful AEP for your organization include meeting regulatory and compliance requirements and retaining current members while on-boarding new members.

In this article, Interim Vice President of Healthcare at Novitex, Kate Braschayko, offers some tips on how healthcare insurance companies can start preparing now:

Have you updated all of your Pre-enrollment and enrollment documents and templates?

Create documents and a template designed specifically with updates for your AEP. This small step will make the process much easier once AEP begins. Leveraging a template management system or customer communication management platform will help facilitate a streamlined and automated process to support your efforts for your comprehensive communications to members and potential members.

Do you have audit and tracking throughout your processes?

Mitigate errors and avoid compliance problems by providing full transparency and chain-of-custody from document composition through approvals and production into the outgoing member mail stream. This will be valuable, if not critical, during a regulatory audit and when self-reporting to regulatory agencies.

Are you sure you have correct mailing addresses for all of your members?

It costs at least $3 each time a piece of mail is marked as undeliverable. Implement address hygiene techniques to avoid unnecessary spending and get mail to your intended recipient on time.

Have you prepared for postage, sorting, and delivery processes and costs?

Presort your outgoing mail to lower your postage spend. There are opportunities for postage savings when using different services.

Will you meet the deadlines?

Executing the steps above may seem like extra work, but following Kate’s advice can save you time and money. Meet deadlines by avoiding unexpected hurdles by preparing enrollment documents, creating transparency and implementing best practices by for mail quality such as presorting and address hygiene.

Novitex can help you prepare for Annual Enrollment Period (AEP). For more information, visit our healthcare solutions. 

Right in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, allergy season has begun in many localities. Since both seasonal allergies and COVID-19 can cause respiratory symptoms , we sought advice from pharmacist Ramzi Yacoub 1 about how you can tell the difference between seasonal allergies and the onset of COVID-19. Here are two things to ask yourself:

Do you have a fever?

Allergies should not produce a fever. COVID-19 almost always presents with a fever. Other symptoms of COVID-19 include coughing and shortness of breath. These symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure.2

Does your allergy medication help to alleviate symptoms?

If your allergy symptoms respond to allergy medication, then it’s a good sign that you aren’t suffering from COVID-19. If your allergies are not responding to medication, that doesn’t mean you have COVID-19. Rather, it may be that you need a different or stronger therapy. In any event, in the case of unresolved symptoms, it’s best to check with your physician.

Yacoub also offers the following advice on how to alleviate allergy symptoms without medication.

• Avoid being outdoors on windy days. If you must be outdoors on windy days, wear a mask (or scarf) and glasses, to keep allergans at bay.
• If you’ve been outdoors, take off your shoes, shower, wash your hair, and change your clothes when you arrive home. Doing so will help prevent pollen and other allergens from spreading inside your home.
• If possible, keep doors and windows closed and use an air conditioner with HEPA filtration. These filters trap allergens before they can irritate you.
• Avoid smoking, as smoking exacerbates allergy symptoms.

We know that everyone is preoccupied with this pandemic. For reference, here is our handy glossary of COVID-19-related terms. Here are three COVID-19-related scams you should stay away from.

1. Ramzi Yacoub, PharmD, Chief Pharmacy Officer for SingleCare.
2. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html

“Without a robust security framework, you’ve got…nothing.” - Tom Dolan, Exela’s senior information security officer

Remember the time when 77 million PlayStation users got locked out of PlayStation for 23 days because a hacker got into the system? We'll never forget it, and neither should you. Even the most air-tight, buttoned-down, pen-tested systems aren’t invulnerable. Find out why in the Q3 edition of PluggedIN: A Leap into the Breach: Leveraging Cybersecurity to Master Your Domain. Flip the virtual pages to learn all that’s fresh and fascinating about cybersecurity, including:

• 21 staggering statistics you need to know about cybersecurity
• What Achilles, D.B. Cooper, and Watergate have in common with Equifax
• The odds your smartphone’s being hacked right this very minute
• Who the “bad guys” are (hint: look around), and how to stop them in their tracks
• Why HIPAA, FISMA, GDRP and all the rest of those pesky acronyms are your data’s BFF
• How to put security at the top of your digital transformation priorities

PluggedIN is Exela's thought leadership publication, providing fresh insights from the cutting edge every quarter. Subscribe. Plug in. Upgrade your mind.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have immense potential to make our lives easier. However, with today’s proliferation of fake news and propaganda, deep learning and other forms of machine learning have the potential to be our worst nightmare.”

- Srini Murali, President Americas and APAC at Exela

Deepfakes are computer-generated videos and images that make it appear a person is doing or saying something they never did or said. The name “deepfake” is a portmanteau of “deep learning” (a type of machine learning by which machines are trained to teach themselves, in part by detecting patterns) and the word “fake.” While there’s nothing really new about manipulating media (after all, Adobe’s PhotoShop has been around since 1990, helping those who are inclined to mislead others on what their eyes are seeing), Deepfake technology has made media manipulation cheaper and more readily available than it has ever been. In fact, as Exela President of Americas and APAC, Srini Murali notes in an article for Business2Community, as of now, deepfakes require no more than a single photo and access to neural network software (an advanced form of machine learning), which, apparently, isn’t all that difficult to access.

With widespread and ever-increasing access to, and sharing of, downloadable media, deepfakes have the potential not only to further erode the public’s trust in “news” but also to create news by sparking events based on fiction, from the trivial to the terrible, including riots and acts of war. The good news is that potential is being subverted by the very technology that makes deepfakes possible, Murali points out. And by that he means artificial intelligence. Just as artificial intelligence can be used to create fake media, it can also be used to detect it. Google has made significant strides in this area, as has Facebook.

The not-so-good news is that deepfakes are capable of proliferating in real-time, whereas the AI deployed to debunk deepfakes takes time and human intervention to run. For now, Murali concludes, while deepfakes are still maintaining their competitive edge, it’s up to us, as a society, to maintain our awareness that we can’t unquestioningly believe everything we see. Rather, he recommends employing vigilance about what we’re seeing and always considering the source.

In more optimistic news, find out how the FDA plans to use machine learning to help relieve the opioid epidemic. And learn how machine learning is becoming increasingly important in the legal industry.

At the end of June, a shift in the healthcare industry took place to the tune of just under $1 billion – retail giant Amazon bought PillPack, an online pharmacy that allows customers to purchase their medications in pre-packaged doses. Already disruptors in their fields, PillPack and Amazon’s new joint venture has repercussions throughout healthcare, from big pharma to insurers to prescribers. One of the slowest-adopting and hardest to shift industries, healthcare, will need to re-examine the way it does business, putting a focus on the convenience that consumers have come to expect.

The end-to-end workflow automation of PillPack is so simple that it begs the question, “why didn’t anyone think of this before?” leaving many in healthcare scrambling to imitate or using it as a model for the intersection of technology and health knowledge. You might feel that pressure at your company as well, and for good reason – no one wants to be left behind when innovation moves forward. Let’s explore three areas – time, transparency, and patient experience - to see where you can help your business keep pace.

The Gift of Time

One thing that makes Amazon so successful is that its simplified purchase and delivery model gives consumers more of their time back to them. This gift of time is achieved through business process automation (BPA), in the PillPack case by streamlining the cumbersome process of handling prescriptions. Discovering ways to free up customers’ time is a concept that every company can embrace regardless of size or available resources – you don’t have to be Amazon to innovate in this area. When combined with personalization and convenience (which is what PillPack does), you have a winning combination for patients and the healthcare market.

Transparency

Mitigate risk with transparency. This is exactly what PillPack does. PillPack manages its workflow refilling prescriptions to delivery, including periodic review of patient profiles through surveys and conversations, thus preventing patients from taking more than their recommended dose or running out of medicine. It is better to be proactive than reactive, which is important from the perspective of both safety and patient satisfaction. This insight into patient needs through automation could prevent life-threatening mistakes. We are even just starting to see the power that AI has in diagnosing people, giving patients and providers more time needed to save lives – a gift with incalculable value.

Patient Experience

Delivering an effective healthcare solution is complex and can be fraught with obstacles, primarily around information privacy, regulations like HIPAA, and the disparate, siloed systems often in place at many companies. Everything from patient portals to staff scheduling to ordering supplies are likely handled by multiple systems. Sometimes, this complexity becomes a barrier to progress. However, this is where digital solutions thrive – interconnecting systems and breaking down silos for streamlined end-to-end process and workflow.

Technology can also be employed to identify patterns in data. These patterns can be used to make decisions and simplify the complexity of everyday work process to improve the overall patient experience. One example of this patient-focused application is medication adherence, one of the largest problems in pharmaceuticals today and a key source of value in PillPack’s model. Adherence to medication not only benefits the patient, but is cost-effective for providers. If patients take their medicine as directed, they will be healthier, may not develop chronic conditions, and experience less traumatic episodes that use high-cost services such as emergency room visits.

Kate Braschayko, Vice President of Healthcare at Exela, weighs in: “In this day and age, there can be a lot of uncertainty in the healthcare ecosystem. That is why it is important for organizations to be open to innovation and examine operations from an end-to-end perspective, leveraging technology for business process automation to drive positive results for all involved, and most importantly for patients.”

By examining the innovations of industry disruptors and boiling them down into these essential elements, your business can further innovate and provide customers and patients with a better experience, higher quality of service, and the efficiency they require in an app-driven, increasingly digital world. You can help bridge the gap between what exists in your current environment and the pace of innovation – all you need is the right mindset and the right digital tools. Learn about Exela's healthcare solutions for payers and healthcare solutions for providers. 

In late January, Madison Advisors published the results of its study of the “capture service” industry, which industry encompasses inbound document processing, which Exela provides through its Digital Mailroom and related solutions.

And guess what? Exela is named as one of the top four leaders in the capture service industry.

Madison Advisors’ study was designed to cull information on industry trends, including the ways in which the industry is making use of, and planning to make use of, RPA (robotic process automation) and cognitive automation. Here are some of the highlights of Madison Advisor’s report on Exela:

Exela’s solutions reflect insight gained from decades in the business

Exela’s expertise in inbound document processing has been culled over three decades of experience in the business through its predecessor companies which came together to form Exela in 2017. Please take a moment to get to know Exela’s fascinating three-decades history here. One thing that differentiates Exela from its competitors is that it has been in the business during every step of its evolution to where it is today. In other words, we understand the back-story because we helped drive it.

Exela’s solutions feature novel, proprietary document classification processes

Exela’s robust inbound digital mailroom processes are augmented by highly configurable tools that automate the routing of images to various workflow tools based on their document classification, which eliminates manual presorting and separators for increased speed and accuracy. In addition, the process generates customized user access reports for audit and accountability purposes and encrypts data and images as needed for added security.

Exela’s processes reflect a keen understanding of best AI practices 

Exela’s approach to exception management (which leverages both AI and human ingenuity by routing exceptions to industry-specific subject matter experts on Exela’s team for review and clearance) reflects Exela’s extensive experience in both labor arbitrage and digital transformation. “Our rules and bots are more effective because of our understanding of our customers’ business processes, which can only come from our extensive experience,” explains Saleem Ahmed, Exela’s Vice President Business Strategy.

Exela’s solutions feature next-generation content analysis and data-mining

Exela’s solutions deal with unstructured data with next-generation tools for natural language processing (NLP), including:

• JET

JET, which was developed by a dedicated team of data scientists and subject matter experts, utilizes machine learning, natural language processing techniques and a set of statistical rules to automate extraction and conversion of metadata elements from any kind of content.

• BoxOffice

After JET’s processing is completed, the extracted metadata and corresponding document are routed to Exela’s Enterprise Information Management solution, BoxOffice. BoxOffice is a next-generation workflow platform, going beyond traditional document capture and extraction to include enhanced content analysis and text mining.

Unprecedented synergies

Exela is uniquely positioned to provide synergies across business operations through global delivery that streamlines operations and enhances quality, experience and cost structure.

Extraordinary information management

Through its reporting tool, Athena, Exela’s Digital Mailroom offers a virtual window into processing operations by providing configurable dashboards with dynamic drill-down capability, delivering real-time visibility and alerts with regard to mission-critical data. Dashboard reporting includes, but is not limited to, daily reports identifying status and age of inventory for all identified work items and volume of work received and processed each day.

“As the capture service market continues to evolve,” notes Madison Advisors in its conclusion, “we expect to see new offerings that will impact inbound mail processing positively, offering advanced cognitive technologies that have the capability to extract data from viewed images via security cameras using machine-learning techniques currently applied to document processing.”

Organizations can cut costs by centralizing and automating the processing of inbound transactional content – any content of an inbound document that initiates a business transaction on the back end. The first post in this short series discussed centralized versus distributed processing, re-use of existing assets, and planning for e-discovery. This one explores issues raised when transitioning to such a model.

The information contained in different pieces of digital content varies, from names and ID numbers to addresses, dates, procedure codes and more. By the time the content is fully processed, it will flow through many different stages and potentially will be handled by several authorized users. Organizations need to implement safeguards that ensure the content isn’t accessible by unauthorized persons and that the content has gone through the necessary stages before reaching its destination.

This can be achieved through service level agreements that define certain parameters at different management levels, based on the regulatory requirements at each stage. Any activity that occurs through this process should be recorded for tracking purposes, as well as any potential audits.

Handling a Variety of Document Types

Each line of business will have a different type and volume of inbound documents. These documents will have an impact on the type of authorization that takes place through the processing workflow, including the achievable SLAs and the technological components of the solution.

Organizations should evaluate what type of documents need to be captured and then design the documents in such a way as to optimize the ability to capture the information to cut the processing time and reduce manual handling.

Compliance

Organizations that have a large geographical footprint might want to move into a centralized shared process in order to leverage a low-cost and effective resourcing model. Business leaders will need to assess all applicable regulations related to every area in the end-to-end processing of the content.